Brooklyn Navy Yard Fire December 20, 1960

December 17, 2010 marked the 50th anniversary of the mid-air collision of two planes over the skies of New York City. One of the planes landed on Miller Field in Staten Island, the second plane landed on the streets of Park Slope Brooklyn. In total 134 people died. Surprisingly, this wasn’t the only tragedy to affect New York City that holiday season. Situated roughly two miles from the crash site on 7th Avenue and 32nd Street there was a massive fire at the Brooklyn Navy Yard on the future aircraft carrier the USS Constitution. In that accident, 50 workers were killed and 330 were injured. If it wasn’t for Clyde Haberman’s article Recalling a Brooklyn Disaster Otherwise Forgotten from December 21, 2010, I’d have never have known it. Before I go into my views on why this disaster seems to be a footnote in New York City history, let me shed some light on the incident.

According to Charles Grutzner of the New York Times on December 20, 1960 the fire started when a lift truck damaged a 500-gallon fuel tank. The fuel made contact with a welder’s torch causing the temporary wooden scaffold and the other flammable materials used on the construction of the ship to feed the blaze. Within minutes a fire was raging out of control that it took over 12-hours to put it out. Many of the firefighters that were on the scene at the plane crash were also on the scene of the aircraft carrier fire. Watch the following video which chronicles both the Park Slope plane crash and the Brooklyn Navy Yard fire from local news footage of the day for images and more information on both accidents.


In the following days, hearings into trying to resolve the cause of the fire led to accusations by the New York City Deputy Fire Commissioner Albert S. Pacetta that the United States Navy of trying to discredit the Fire Department and their efforts during the fire. Regardless of who was to blame for the accident, the fact remains that 50 civilian dockworkers were killed and 330 were injured without so much as a peep in terms of a public acknowledgement aside from an article in the New York Times.

I made a mention of how certain incidents fall from the mind of people over time in my post on the General Slocum. With that incident, it seems that the lives lost on the fire of the paddleboat are forgotten in comparison to those lives lost on the steamship Titanic a few months later. Why is it that those lives that were lost in the plane crash are honored with a memorial in Greenwood Cemetery and those lost at the Brooklyn Navy Yards are not? Is it possible that we can empathize with people who lose their lives in a plane crash since air travel is something common to every one of us? I really don’t have a concise answer to those two questions. All I’m trying to do is shed a little light on a piece of New York City History that seems to be lost to time.

FH

Wall Street Bombing September 16, 1920

Imagine this scene: You are standing on the Northeast corner of Broadway and Wall Street looking eastward. The date is September 16, 1920 and the day is cool and comfortable. You note that the street is bustling with activity in the minutes before noon chime goes off in the above looming Trinity Church. Men and women walk along taking care of their daily business. Street vendors sell their wares to the passing public. It seems like a scene out of the Wall Street from the year 2010, well aside from the armed Federal guards and the street barriers.

You walk down Wall Street towards the corner of Wall and Broad Streets and come face to face with three future landmarks of New York City’s financial district. To your left is Federal Hall, made famous by George Washington and his inauguration as this nation’s first President. Behind you to your right are the columns of the New York Stock Exchange building. In front of you on your right is the JP Morgan building at 23 Wall Street (The view in the above picture is from Federal Hall with the 23 Wall Street in the front and the New York Stock Exchange on the right). You look down at your watch and notice that that the minute hand has joined the hour hand on the number 12. That innocent looking horse drawn wagon that sat across from the Morgan building goes from being innocent to lethal leading to the deaths of 38 people and injuring hundreds more. This is Wall Street, September 16, 1920. (PHOTO CREDIT Mark Lennihan/Associated Press).

What exactly happened on that fateful day? To best describe the event I quote author Kevin Baker in his New York Times review of Beverly Gage’s book The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America in its First Age of Terror:

The bomb was an immeasurably cruel device, most likely dynamite tied to iron sash weights that acted as shrapnel. It blew people apart where they walked out on a cool, late-summer day, tore arms and legs, hands and feet and scalps off living human beings. Others were beheaded or eviscerated, or found themselves suddenly engulfed in flames. Still more injuries were caused by a cascade of broken glass and the terrified stampede that followed.

Given the political climate at the time, it was believed that that those responsible for the attack were radical Anarchists. Later it was believed to have been planned by agents of Soviet ruler Vladimir Lenin. After exhausting investigations by the New York Police Department and the Bureau of Investigations (predecessor to the Federal Bureau of Investigations) of witness statements and numerous arrests with no convictions the case remains officially unsolved.

According to scholars, it is believed that attack was perpetuated by a known radical by the name of Mario Buda (1884–1963) aka Mike Boda. Paul Avrich in his book Sacco and Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background claims that the reason for Buda's attack was in protest of the arrests of his friends Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. Sacco and Vanzetti were arrested, tried and executed for their believed roles in the South Braintree (Massachusetts) holdup that led to the killing of a paymaster and a guard on April 15, 1920.

Mike Davis, author of Buda's Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb, states that Buda was a supporter of Luigi Galleani (1861-1931). Galleani was an anarchist theorist and editor of the Cronaca Sovversiva an Italian anarchist periodical. The Galleanist

Why Buda picked Wall Street as a location for his message is unknown. It is also not known whether he acted alone or with other anarchists. What is known is that a message was left in a mailbox on the corner of Cedar Street and Broadway. The message in red letters read as so:

Remember
We Will Not Tolerate
Any Longer
Free The Political Prisoners
Or It Will Be
Sure Death For All of You
American Anarchist Fighters

Why wasn't Buda ever arrested? After the bombing, Buda made his way back to Providence, Rhode Island where after getting a passport from the Italian Vice-Consul, Buda boarded a ship heading to Italy where he remained until his death in 1963.

The Wall Street Bombing of 1920 was the largest terrorist act on American soil until the attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. The attack was the largest terrorist act in New York City history until it was eclipsed by the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

FH

For Further Reading:
Paul Avrich, Sacco and Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1991)

Mike Davis, Buda's Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb (London, Verso Press, 2007)

Beverly Gage The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America In Its First Age of Terror (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2009)

- Click Here for the Trial of Sacco and Vanzetti 1921 page with maps, images and excerpt of the trial

- Click Here for the Palmer Raids post on the FBI Wall of Shame blogpage for some background on the Galleanists and other anarchist groups.

New York City As An Example of Religious Freedom

Mayor Bloomberg went against popular opinion last week and decided to back the building of the mosque near Ground Zero. By holding the press conference at Governors Island, with the Statue of Liberty and Lower Manhattan in the background, Mayor Bloomberg stated that on the island that he stood on "the seeds of religious tolerance were first planted". He would later describe the efforts of both the Jews and Quakers to establish their religious rights within the New Amsterdam colony (as I have written about in both the Who is Asser Levy and the Flushing Remonstrance posts).

Unlike the other colony in Massachusetts with their shining city on the hill who banned those who did not have the same religious beliefs as they did (while banning those of the same faith who aided them get to the 'New World" while exiled in Europe), the New Amsterdam colony was unique. I won't say that it was for altruistic reasons that religious freedom came about in New Amsterdam. No it was simply about one thing: Money.

The Dutch West India company set up the New Amsterdam colony for one reason and one reason only: To Make Money. With so many people of different races, creeds and religions coming into such a small and confined space it was inevitable that there would be conflicts. The heads of the Dutch West India company realized that to make money, concessions must be made and one of those concessions was the freedom of religion. The company wasn't there to regulate religious beliefs but to ensure that the colony was profitable. Happy colonists meant profitable colonists. This is why the first Jewish congregation was set up in 1657 and the Quakers were able to practice their religion without fear of persecution in 1662.

It is with these "seeds" as Mayor Bloomberg eloquently spoke about on Governors Island that New York City has always been the place for religious freedom. It hasn't always been easy. But that is one of the reasons why Historically New York City will always be different from not only every city in the United States but in the entire world. Whether that remains to be seen with the protests against Mosques not at Ground Zero but also in Staten Island. Time will tell.

FH

For Further Reading:
- Click Here for the full transcript of Mayor Bloomberg's speech from Celeste Katz's Blog page on the New York Daily News website

FH

Return to the Jewish Arrival to New Amsterdam 1654

In my post of January 14, 2010 called Who Was Asser Levy I wrote about the story of how the Shearith Israel Congregation came to become the first Jewish congregation in New Amsterdam.

The story shows that the congregation was formed due to the emigration of 23 Jewish refugees from the former Dutch colony of Nieuw Holland in 1654 to New Amsterdam. Their arrival put them at odds with the Dutch Director-General of New Amsterdam Peter Stuyvesant. Though Stuyvesant tried to have these refugees expelled from his colony, his attempts were rebuked by the Dutch West India company and by 1657 the Jewish refugees won full rights within the colony. Ok, that's the story in a nutshell. As with any historical event, there is always more than meets the eye and my research on the matter has dug up a more elaborate scenario. So here goes.

It is accurate that the Dutch colony of Nieuw Holland was taken over by the Portuguese under General Francisco Barreto de Menezes. Menezes gave the order that those who did not want to live under Portuguese rule in the colony had six months to leave. In order to facilitate the evacuation, Menezes provides the colony's refugees with sixteen ships that were to sail from Nieuw Holland to Holland. In making the journey to Europe, many of the ships faced peril in the form of dangerous conditions and pirates. Many of these ships did not make it to Europe. The ship that carried the Jewish refugees was one such ship.

Here is where I find different branches to the story. In my original post, I said that the Jewish refugees arrived in New Amsterdam during the month of September of 1654 aboard the ship the Sainte Catherine. Ana Domingos and Paulo Mendes Pinto in their article Tracing the History of the First Jews in the US state the following:

One of the boats was attacked by pirates in Cuba, but the lives of twenty-three Portuguese Jews were saved by a French ship, the Sainthe Catherine...On September 7, 1654, the Sainthe Catherine arrived in Dutch waters at the port of the city of Nieuw Amsterdam. Its captain, Jacques de la Motthe, said farewell to the ones he saved, leaving behind the first Jewish settlers in North America.

Well that was very nice of Captain de la Motthe. But like I said before, there is always more than meets the eye. Abraham J. Peck in his article Creating Jewish New York sheds more light on Captain de la Motthe's motives:

The generally accepted history is that in late August or early September of 1654, a French ship--called variously the St. Catherine or St. Charles--captained by Jacques de la Motthe, arrived in the harbor of New Amsterdam with a number of Dutch refugees, including 23 Jewish men, women, and children, presumably from Recife. The surviving docu mentary references have given rise to a number of theories regarding the route and circumstances that brought these pioneers to Peter Stuyvesant's small village.

At least two Jews met the boat: Solomon Pieters or Petersen, who appears briefly in the Dutch records as advocate for the Jews in their first dealings with Stuyvesant; and Jacob Barsimson, an Ashkenazi trader who had just arrived in the colony. Captain de la Motthe sued his Jewish passengers for the promised fare, and when they were unable to meet his demands, two heads of family were imprisoned as hostages until funds to pay the debt could be obtained from relatives in Amsterdam.

To further shed light to the arrival of the Jewish refugees to New Amsterdam, I found the following from the passenger logs from the St. Charles on Olivetreegeneology.com:

St. Charles 1654

The Dutch administrations in Brazil, which succeeded that of Gov. Maurice, were inefficient and corrupt. The Portuguese revolted and the Dutch finally capitulated January 25, 1654. They were given three months in which either to depart or to embrace the Roman Catholic religion and become Portuguese citizens. In April 1654, there was a fleet of sixteen Dutch ships in the Harbor of Recif to evacuate the Dutch Protestants together with a small number of Dutch and Portuguese Jews.

On 7 Sept. 1654 Capt. Jacques de la Motthe/Motte, skipper of the St. Charles, appeared in court with a petition. He required payment for freight and board 'of the Jews whom he brought here from Cape St. Anthony". de la Motte states that "the Netherlanders who came over with them" are not included in his suit and that they have paid him. Solomon Pietersen "a Jew" appears and says that "900 guilders of the 2500 are paid and that there are 23 souls, big and little [meaning adults and children] who must pay equally"

[Source: The Records of New Amsterdam from 1653 to 1674 Anno Domini, edited by Berthold Fernow in 7 volumes. reprint Genealogical Publishing Co. Inc. Baltimore. 1976 Vol. I Minutes of the Court of Burgomasters and Schepens 1653-1655 p 240]

The names I have found so far (using primary records only) are:

Abram Israel
David Israel
Asser Levy
Moses Ambrosius
Judicq de Mereda

It is not clear if Solomon Pietersen was on board the ship so I have not added his name to the list.

Another passenger (non-Jewish) was Dominie Joannes Polhemius

From what can be pieced together about them, it seem probable that the twenty-three consisted of six family heads---four men (with their wives) and two other women who in all likelihood were widows, since they were counted separately---and thirteen young people. The heads of the families were Asser Levy, Abraham Israel De Piza (or Dias), David Israel Faro, Mose Lumbosco, and ---the two women---Judith (or Judica) Mercado) (or De Mercado, or de Mereda) and Ricke (or Rachel) Nunes. [Source: The Grandees: America's Sephardic Elite by Stephen Birmingham]

Leo Hershkowitz in his article By Chance or Choice: Jews in New Amsterdam 1654 adds the following to the argument:

In late summer 1654, two ships anchored in New Amsterdam roadstead. One, the Peereboom (Peartree), arrived from Amsterdam on or about August 22. The other, a Dutch vessel named the St. [Sint] Catrina, is often referred to as the French warship St. Catherine or St. Charles. Yet, only the name St. Catrina appears in original records, having entered a few days before September 7 from the West Indies. The Peereboom, Jan Pietersz Ketel, skipper, left Amsterdam July 8 for London, soon after peace negotiations in April concluded the first Anglo-Dutch War (1652–1654). Following a short stay, the Peereboom sailed for New Amsterdam, where passengers and cargo were ferried ashore, as there were no suitable docks or wharves. Among those who disembarked were Jacob Barsimon, probably together with Asser Levy and Solomon Pietersen. These were the first known Jews to set foot in the Dutch settlement, and with them begins the history of that community in New York.

So what does all this mean. I believe that the arrival of the Jewish refugees to New Amsterdam was much more complicated than I posted. The fact that the refugees and their possessions were basically held for ransom by the Captain of the St Catherine. The story of the battle between Captain de la Motthe and the Jewish refugees was documented in detail in The Green Bag: An Entertaining Magazine for Lawyers 1901. Lee M. Friedman documents in his article The Petition of Jacques de la Motthe (Volume XIII No 8 August 1901 Pg 396-398) the attempts of Captain de la Motthe to receive payment of the Jewish refugees. He attempted to do so by means of filing suit against the refugees and later through the attempted sale of their possessions by public auction. In the end, the refugees appealed to the better nature of the crew of the Saint Catherine. The crew heard the pleas of the Jewish representative Solomon Pietersen and decided to wait for their payment until their return to New Amsterdam on a later voyage.

It was at this point that Stuyvesant attempted to have the refugees removed from the colony by his appealing to the West India Company. His appeal was rejected due to the Jewish influence within the West India Company and the belief that the colony was there to make money. As the saying goes: The rest is history.

FH.

For Further Reading:
- Click Here to read the Ana Domingos and Paulo Mendes Pinto article Tracing the History of the First Jews in the US
- Click Here to access Abraham J. Peck's article Creating Jewish New York
- Click Here to read the ship's log for the St. Charles from Olivetreegeneology.com
- Click Here to read the Leo Hershkowitz article By Chance or Choice: Jews in New Amsterdam 1654 in PDF format
- Click Here to access the Google Books Digitized Version of the The Green Bag: An Entertaining Magazine for Lawyers 1901. Lee M. Friedman article on the Petition of Jacques de la Motthe, pg 396-398

The Sinking of the General Slocum June 15, 1904

On June 15, 1904, a steamship leaves the dock in the neighborhood that was known as Little Germany up the East River for the serene waters of Long Island Sound. Aboard the ship that was named after a Civil War were over 1,000 people who were looking forward to a Sunday school picnic along the shores of Long Island. As little as an hour later, the ship would be ablaze with a panicking public aboard a ship whose safety precautions all failed. This tragedy which happened 106 years ago was the biggest tragedy in the history of New York City until the events of September 11, 2001 and is largely forgotten. Here is my attempt to shine a little bit of light on an event that should never be forgotten.

In 1904, the neighborhood of Little Germany was made up from 14th Street to the North, Houston Street to the South, 2nd Avenue to the West and the East River to the East which currently make up the neighborhoods of the East Village, Alphabet City and the Lower East Side. The center to the neighborhood was the St. Marks Evangelical Lutheran Church on 6th Street, which was led by Reverend George Haas. It was his congregation that made up the majority of the victims of the General Slocum.

Named after Civil War hero General Henry Warner Slocum (September 24, 1827 – April 14, 1894), the General Slocum was a 264-foot long wooden steamship paddleboat with three large open decks that was piloted by Captain William Van Schaick. The boat was slowly filled with many parishioners of the St. Marks Church as well as Irish, Italian and Jewish immigrants that lived and worked within the neighborhood of Little Germany. At 9:40 am, the ship pushed off into the busy and crowded East River from the 3rd Street pier as bands played German music on the docks. Little more that twenty minutes later, a fire that was generated deep within the bowels of the ship and was starting to consume the ship leaving its passengers in a frightened panic.

The ship continued on course up the East River passing the treacherous segment known as the Hell Gate (Author's Note: As a someone who was born and raised in Astoria, the stories of the Hell Gate are well known. A child in my Junior High School drowned in those waters and I saw how the water churned in many different directions while hanging out at the Strip that ran along side Astoria Park). While the boat burned and sailed on, the passengers tried to release the lifeboats that were on the top deck. To their chagrin, the lifeboats had been affixed to the decks and the passengers in vain tried to dislodge them. Many other passengers tried to save themselves with the safety vests that similar to the lifeboats were not in working order. Many of the vests simply ripped apart. Those that were preserved complete the cork that made the up the buoyancy for the vests had decomposed into powder, which led to those passengers, who wore them in the water to sink instantly. The water hoses that were crucial to the fighting of the fire were faulty, full of holes and burst when the water passed through them. The ship had been inspected and passed only five weeks before the tragedy.

Instead of trying to dock along the Astoria coastline, the captain decided to head to North Brother Island off the coast of the Bronx. To make matters worse, as the ship was navigating past the Hell Gate, the top deck collapsed from the effects of the support beams being burned away and from the ship hitting rocks underneath the water. The bone jarring collision sent many passengers flying off the portside into the churning waters of Hell Gate to a swift death. Women and the children were burdened by heavy and restricting clothing, which only helped to cause then to drown even faster.

On North Brother Island was a hospital that was being utilized for those patients that were being quarantined because of contagious illnesses (one of the hospital’s most famous patients was "Typhoid" Mary Mallon). As the General Slocum was approaching the island, the hospital’s Doctors, Nurses, Administrators and even patients ran out to help. As the living were taken from the water and the ship, the ship continued to drift in the water and finally landed more than a mile away on the beach at Hunt's Point.

In total, over 1,000 people, mainly women and children perished. An inquest would later find all the employees innocent of all charges except for the Captain who was found guilty and sentenced to 10 years in prison in Sing Sing (Van Schaick served three and a half years and was pardoned by President William Howard Taft). The families received a $500 dollar insurance payment for each family member lost in the tragedy. The neighborhood of Little Germany was decimated and faded away.

Though the neighborhood has changed, two markers remain to remind those of the former Little Germany. The former St. Marks Evangelical Lutheran Church is still standing on 6th Street but it is now known as The Sixth Street Community Synagogue having been taken over by a number of Jewish parishioners in November 1940. The second marker is located within Tompkins Square Park. As per the New York City Parks Department Website:

The Slocum Memorial Fountain by sculptor Bruno Louis Zimm was donated by the Sympathy Society of German Ladies and installed in Tompkins Square Park, a central feature of the neighborhood. The nine-foot upright stele is made of pink Tennessee marble with a low relief of two children looking seaward as well as a lionhead spout.

Ironically, the Titanic disaster occurred 8 years later becoming part of American history and spawning tales of heroism and legendary accomplishments while the General Slocum is seen as being no more than a historical footnote. Regardless of how it is seen by many, it is an event that should never been forgotten. Ever.

FH.

For Further Reading:
- O'Donnell, Edward T. O’Donnell Ship Ablaze: The Tragedy of the Steamboat General Slocum, 2004.
- Click Here for the text of the New York Times June 16, 1904 about the General Slocum Tragedy
- Click Here for the text of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle June 15, 1904 about the General Slocum Tragedy
- Click Here for the GeneralSlocum.com webpage
- Click Here for an amazing website created by Jim Kalafus, a great-grandson of one of the victims of the General Slocum Tragedy
- Click Here for a Blog Page about North Brother Island with recent pictures of the buildings still standing on the island
- Click Here for the NYC Parks Department website listing for the Slocum Memorial Fountain
- Click Here for the NYC Parks Department website as it refers to Astoria Park and the General Slocum Disaster
- Click Here for the NYC Parks Deparment website for North and South Brother Islands